(a) Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to a polypropylene resin composition for creating a fabric texture. More particularly, it relates to a polypropylene resin composition comprising a polypropylene resin containing at least two selected from a homopolypropylene, a propylene-ethylene copolymer, and a high-crystalline polypropylene (HCPP); a polypropylene elastomer; an ethylene-α-olefin copolymer; an inorganic filler; a cellulose fiber; and a volcanic rock.
(b) Background Art
As recent trends have moved towards high quality vehicles, plastic parts for vehicle interior components such as a door trim, a pillar trim, etc. are required to have a luxurious quality. Therefore, the plastic parts for vehicle interior components are wrapped or painted with fibers to improve the vehicle interior quality. However, the method of wrapping or painting the plastic parts with fibers has drawbacks, such as an increase in cost due to the additional process, deterioration of quality, and environmental pollution in the vehicle interior due to the odor caused by volatile organic compounds (VOC) due to the use of organic solvent and adhesive.
Extensive research has been conducted to address these issues. Of them, a method of directly spraying cellulose fibers onto a plastic part has certain drawbacks, such as the production of VOC due to the use of adhesive during processing, and an increase in cost due to a post process. Alternatively, a method of directly adding at least two cellulose fibers to a polypropylene resin to create a fabric texture to the resin itself is disclosed in Korean Patent No. 10-61496, incorporated by reference in its entirety herein. Although this method does not require an additional process for an injection-molded product, the fabric texture varies according to the color of the plastic part and there are many limitations in applying this method to various embossing patterns on the plastic parts for vehicle interior components. Further, the method, which depends on the color difference and size of cellulose fibers to create the colors of plastic parts, cannot produce a desired fabric texture due to the tangle and cut of cellulose fibers during resin processing. Furthermore, when the cellulose fibers are directly added to the polypropylene resin, a masterbatch of cellulose fibers may be prepared in advance to improve the dispersion of cellulose fibers and then the cellulose fibers may be directly added to the masterbatch during resin processing or during injection molding. This method provides excellent dispersion of cellulose fibers in the polypropylene resin. However, the tangle of cellulose fibers and the reduction in their size are caused by a second process and thus the fabric texture is reduced when the resulting resin is used in plastic parts for vehicle interior components having embossed surfaces, which in turn increases the processing cost due to an additional process. Moreover, the existing cellulose fibers or synthetic cellulose fibers are carbonized at about 250° C., and thus the cellulose fibers are burned or discolored during injection molding of plastic parts, thus degrading the quality of the plastic parts.
Therefore, the there is an increased demand for new vehicle interior materials that can be used in high quality vehicle interior design.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.